DEPARTMENT
OF JUSTICE
'Civil Rights,' Bush style

By Dara Purvis | RAW STORY COLUMNIST

The summer after my last year as an
undergraduate , I interned in the Civil Rights Division
of the Department of Justice in DC. I took a lot of
ribbing from some friends about having John Ashcroft
as my boss, but at the time I viewed the civil rights
offices as a haven from the extreme right-wing politics
of the rest of the Department.

Advertisement

This is not to say that
the sections within civil rights were staffed by hordes
of left-wing refugees biding their time until a change
of administration—I didn’t talk politics
with any of the attorneys I worked with, but there
were plenty of signed portraits of George W. Bush
up on office walls, and I definitely wasn’t
working on any cases that would raise Ashcroft’s
ire.

But neither was I working on the kind of systemic
campaign against civil liberties that appeared to
be the rest of the Department’s raison d’etre,
so I thought of the Civil Rights Division as the one
area that might at least be close to neutral in the
culture wars being waged by the administration.

I have been thoroughly disabused of that notion this
week. Attorneys from the Civil Rights Division recently
threatened administrators at Southern Illinois University
with lawsuits alleging violations of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964. That Act; the foundational statute that
shapes the modern legal framework of the civil rights
movement, was passed to combat horrific racism against
African-Americans, and has become a sort of touchstone
for progressives, in the sense that it represents
so much that can be right with the law. In response
to widespread societal discrimination, a grassroots
movement drove through passage of a law that stands
for racial tolerance and equality, that has served
as a foundation for many legal victories in the fight
for equal justice for all.

So you would think that the allegations against SIU
must be some disgusting throwback to the days of segregation
and outright racism. You would be wrong. The wrong
identified and targeted by the Department of Justice’s
Civil Rights Division is a handful of scholarships
for minority students.

The scholarship programs would hardly raise normal
eyebrows. There are three programs apparently judged
to be racist: one called “Bridge to the Doctorate,”
that provides funds to assist “underrepresented
minority students” to pursue “graduate
study in science, technology, engineering, and math.”
Another, called “Proactive Recruitment and Multicultural
Professionals for Tomorrow,” aim at increasing
“the number of minorities receiving advanced
degrees in disciplines in which they are underrepresented.”
And the third, “Graduate Dean’s,”
is for “woman and traditionally underrepresented
students who have overcome social, cultural, or economic
conditions.” From these three efforts to provide
financial assistance for traditionally underrepresented
students pursuing graduate degrees, the Department
of Justice alleges a “pattern or practice of
discrimination against whites, non-preferred minorities
and males,” according to the letter sent to
the University and discussed in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Is this what the ugly opposition to the civil rights
movement has come to? The question of what the appropriate
response to the lingering effects of centuries of
discrimination should be has been a contentious one,
usually discussed within the context of affirmative
action as to university admissions. I’ve never
understood the willful myopia necessary to think that
we have achieved equality already—prerequisite
necessary to argue that any differential treatment
of students of different races, such as affirmative
action, is wrong—and in the context of constitutional
analysis, it seems ridiculous that the most racist
law targeting blacks for discrimination and a statute
passed by a majority of a legislature attempting to
assist a traditionally disadvantaged group are evaluated
as if their goals were equally illegitimate.

But the Department of Justice’s argument seems,
to me, an unbelievably perverse manipulation of this
country’s seeming commitment to equality. There
are scores of scholarship programs that are targeted
for specific populations. Scholarships can be specifically
for students in particular disciplines, for students
from a specific area or city, for women, for students
that graduated from particular high schools or colleges,
or for children of parents that work in a given industry.
If I wanted to endow a scholarship at my undergraduate
school given only to girls named Dara from Fresno,
I could do so—it probably wouldn’t have
too many takers, but the Department of Justice would
not be sending angry letters to USC demanding that
they terminate the program or face lawsuits.

Under this logic, only one kind of scholarship can
be targeted: scholarships drawn along racial lines.
And under the current leadership of the Department
of Justice, only one form of those scholarships has
come under fire: scholarships trying to help minority
students pay for their education. Not only, says Attorney
General Gonzales, can schools not acknowledge that
students of color face obstacles that the average
white applicant do not, but now even when a black
student is already admitted to a prestigious graduate
program, schools can’t help them pay for it.

It sickens me that this is what the so-called “Civil
Rights Division” of the Justice Department is
working on. The office charged with helping the federal
government ensure that the civil rights of Americans
are respected has instead decided to put hardworking
minority students in its sights. And most appallingly,
with the new Roberts Court staffed with the potential
Justice Alito, it will have a Supreme Court more than
willing to help the crusade.

Dara Purvis is a weekly contributor to Raw Story,
and is also involved in Law Students Against Alito.
Visit her on the web @ www.DaraPurvis.com.